


Wild

by JRaylin441



Series: Briareus [12]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 14:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7175423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRaylin441/pseuds/JRaylin441
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natalie is a park ranger who teaches an outdoor survival class. One day she finds a particularly interesting teenager in her lessons, though he's a little bit terrifying too.</p>
<p>
  <i>If there was one thing, though, that Natalie loved most about the classes, it was taking a kid who clearly had never set foot outside the city and teaching them how to appreciate the outdoors. She always tried to pick at least one person for every class. One person to really focus on.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild

This was actually Natalie’s favorite part of working at the park. The rangers were supposed to rotate through teaching classes and walking patrols so that there was a balance, but Dirk hated working with kids and Natalie liked being around people, so that they worked out a trade fairly early on. He taught just enough classes and she walked just enough patrols that if their boss asked, they could sound like they knew what they were talking about.

If there was one thing, though, that Natalie loved most about the classes, it was taking a kid who clearly had never set foot outside the city and teaching them how to appreciate the outdoors. She always tried to pick at least one person for every class. One person to really focus on.

This one had been easy.

He was lounging against one of the larger trees, wearing head-to-toe black leather and toying with a thick, blond braid. From the way he stuck to the back of the group, it was pretty safe to assume that he had been forced to come here with his family. They were probably scattered somewhere with the majority of the group. He had stumbled into the class five minutes late, and had since adopted an expression of aggressive indifference. He had not paid attention to a single word that Natalie had said. She was willing to bet he had also not paid attention to where he was sitting. Which ensured entertainment when he finally noticed all of the fire ants.

The class was a basic survival walk-though, meant to teach people how to build a fire, catch a fish, and cook an outdoor meal. Simple enough, but capable of saving your life. Even the army would sometimes send people down to learn.

They left the classroom and headed toward the clearing generally used for the fire-starting lessons. Natalie pretended not to hear the boy cursing a blue streak behind her as he frantically flapped his arms over his clothing.

“Okay, so let’s start by figuring out what you guys already know. Everybody head to a station and try to start a fire! I’ll be coming around to see how it goes.” Everybody spread out, and she watched the kid slump towards a station at the far edge. Every now and then he would twitch and slap at his clothes. It was usually a good idea to let kids like him struggle for a little bit. That way, when she finally made her way over to them, their pride had already been knocked down a few pegs. Sometimes she was lucky enough that they were willing to listen.

Natalie started her rounds, running a hand through her hair before tying it back. One case of singed bangs was one case too many. The first few places she stopped at were full of people rubbing two sticks together. They had just started, and she didn’t want to give everything away just yet, but she made sure to hint that there was a better way. In a few minutes she would check back in.

It was a personal record that she made it five minutes before checking in on her chosen teen. She spent the minutes talking with everyone else and gently guiding them back toward the right path while doing everything she could to avoid even glancing at the kid. One image of him rubbing two twigs together, in what would no doubt be righteous indignation at their refusal to light, would ruin her.

She almost tripped over the campfire.

The happily crackling little campfire that sat in front of the city boy, spitting out a spark here and there and generally being as well-behaved as any campfire should be. The boy, for his part, had now returned to his hobby of cursing the ants as he plucked them from his clothing and dangled them over the fire, bestowing a burning glare upon each one before dropping them in.

She knew the type. When park rangers talked about challenge children (which, given, wasn’t actually that often), this was the kind that they hated most of all. This boy was the type who hid a lighter in their back pocket and spent the whole class taking the easy way out, not learning a thing that would help them if caught unawares.

“I made the damn fire. Can I go now?” At first glance, it looked like he was talking to the ant currently pinched over the flames, but then he flicked his eyes up to meet hers (and she was _not_ distracted by the fact that they were the exact same color as the fire) and smirked.

Challenge accepted.

“Nope! We still have fishing and cooking! If you wait just a few minutes, I’m going to show the group how to properly start a fire, and then we can head down and start looking for some grub.” Holy crap she was annoying herself with how cheerful her voice sounded. The boy reared back and looked personally affronted by her geniality. Still, there was nothing he could do and he knew it, so he kicked out at the ground impotently and went back to torturing the poor ants.

Natalie brushed it off and moved to the middle of the clearing, where she gave a very competent and helpful demonstration of the proper way to start a fire. Once everyone got theirs started, she made sure they also put them out correctly, before moving toward the river.

The kid hadn’t listened to a single word.

A trend that actually continued once they reached the river. This time, Natalie started out with a proper demonstration, walking the group through the different ways to gather food from a river. She covered edible plants and ways to make nets for fish. The kid once again sat at the back of the group, and as she talked everyone through the steps, he was running a sharp stone alone a thick stick, sharpening it to a point. For a moment, Natalie wondered if she should have put more stock in the all-black clothing and generally pissed-off expression.

This time, she didn’t waste any time in approaching Mr. Rebellious Phase. As soon as she released the group to their own devices, she headed in his direction. The kid, for his part, did not even notice, and began to trek downstream with the now-wicked-sharp stick. As soon as he came ‘round a bend he stopped. Just out of sight of the rest of the group.

Natalie grabbed his arm. “What exactly do you think you are doing? It’s important to stay with the rest of the group during these lessons. We are dealing with dangerous skills.” The kid rolled his eyes, clearly uncaring. “Let me try a different approach. Your parents signed a paper when they joined this class that promised you would stay with the group. If you can’t do that, I’ll have to ask your entire family to leave, and I doubt that you want to deal with that.”

The kid loosed a sardonic laugh, and for a second Natalie thought she had won the fight, but he just reached up and _pried_ her fingers off his arm before stepping out into the river. He took two more steps before standing stock-still, the stick poised about his head. When Natalie finally realized what he was attempting, she couldn’t help but start laughing. There was a sarcastic comment on the tip of her tongue, and for just a second she forgot that she was supposed to be the responsible adult in this situation-

He twitched. A flash of color and then light off water. A fish was stuck on the end of the damn pointed stick.

“Shit.” The boy seemed to take physical pleasure in the statement of curse words, his mouth twisting around them and savoring them. “Damn machine.” He yanked the unmoving carcass off the end of the stick and tossed it toward the bank. “Can never get the strength right.”

Distantly, Natalie noticed that the fish at her feet had a hole punched straight through its center, pulverizing most of the edible meat. There was a slow trickle of blood from the injury.

Another splash followed by a victorious _whoop_.

Natalie glanced up and the boy was waving the stick around like a flag, a much more delicately pulverized fish stuck on the end. It was the first time that day that she had seen him smile, and for a second his face was bright with sun and youth. A drop of blood flicked off the end of the fish’s tail and spattered against his forehead. She didn’t think he noticed.

Absently, she remembered the first few days of training, when Dirk and James had spent hours trying to catch a fish with a knife tied to the end of a stick. The game had ended when James had hit a rock instead of a fish, and the knife had been knocked off the stick and left to flow down the river where it promptly cut a line across Dirk’s foot.

“I just have to cook the fish, right? And then I can go?”

“What?” And the boy was picking his way across the rocks back to the bank. He gingerly picked up the first catch by the tips of his fingers, and then tossed it back into the river, nose wrinkled in disgust.

“That’s a waste.” He turned back to her. “You said we have to catch a fish a cook a meal. I caught a fish. If I cook it, can I go?”

And Natalie distantly found herself saying something along the lines of _yeah, sure_ even though that was really not allowed and her boss would be furious. They headed back upstream.

A figure in a park ranger uniform came jogging up to her as soon as they were in sight of the group. “Hey, Nats. Everything okay?”

“Dirk?” He shot her a smile from under a thatch of black hair and it was the taste of normal that she really needed right then.

“I was doing my rounds and I found this group standing around like a bunch of aimless sheep. What happened?”

“I was just…” How did she explain what she had been doing? And where was the kid, anyway? He had slipped off when Dirk had showed up. “There was this kid…”

“Say no more!” He flung an arm around her shoulder and started guiding them back to the group. “You’re always off with some charity case or another.”

“Yeah.” And she let herself be guided back to the group. The kid was nowhere to be seen, but everybody else was desperately in need of help. They spent the next hour or so rescuing crying children from stumbles that had left them soaking wet, and obnoxious teenagers from self-inflicted tangles in nets. By the time everyone had caught a fish, Natalie was beginning to see the attractiveness of Dirk’s love for walking rounds, but she managed to convince everyone to start their way back up the hill toward the fire-starting clearing.

“Okay everybody! Let’s see if you can remember how to start a fire! Once you’ve got one going, we’ll show you how to cook your fish!” The group once again scattered throughout the stations, but Dirk nudged her with his elbow.

“Hey, Nats. What’s over there?”

In a way, she already knew what she would see when she looked. Still, her body managed to dredge up some surprise at the neat little pile of fish bones stacked on top of some large steaming leaves. It was placed neatly next to the dead coals of a campfire that hadn’t been there before. She couldn’t see hide nor hair of the boy.

Thank goodness.

**Author's Note:**

> Psst. Natalie and Dirk totally fall in love and live a quiet life out in the woods with nature and stuff, except for when Natalie drives into town to work as a kindergarten teacher.


End file.
